Modern computing devices, such as laptops, smartphones, mobile internet devices (MIDs), and tablets, often include functionality for wirelessly connecting with one or more networks. Such functionality is increasingly important to users of computing devices that often travel between any number of different locations, but still require access to network-based content and services provided by a remote computing device or server. In providing such access, a computing device may wirelessly connect with one or more different wireless access points, each of which are connected to a network, such as the Internet.
To decrease the amount of time required to reconnect to a particular wireless access point, a computing device may save a password and an identifier associated with each wireless access point to which the computing device connects. As such, when scanning for available wireless access points with which to connect, the computing device may receive an identifier that matches one of the saved identifiers. In response, the computing device may reconnect to the wireless access point associated with the received identifier using the corresponding password and thereby decrease the amount of time needed to connect. However, saving an identifier and a password for each wireless access point to which the computing device connects does not typically decrease the amount of time needed to scan for available wireless access points with which to connect.
Additionally, some computing devices may attempt to reconnect to one or more wireless access points based on a current location. For example, some computing devices may determine a current location and attempt to reconnect to one or more wireless access points known to be available for reconnection at the determined location. To do so, however, such computing devices must typically include location-determining functionality (e.g., Global Positioning System components, radio frequency triangulation, network connectivity, etc.), which may either be computationally and resource intensive on the computing device or require an always-on/always-available connection to a network.